


let's go to the beach-each

by orphan_account



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death Stranding AU, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-16
Updated: 2019-11-17
Packaged: 2021-01-31 17:29:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21449998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: In which the companies Osama Express and Amouterus are bound and intertwined together more than they'd like to admit.(Alternatively, Zwei Seiten but in a Death Stranding AU.)
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i dont know what im doing, periodt bottom line cut n dry

In a world like this, rumors only spread so far.

But they were some type of a legend among others, not for their speedy delivery or even the quality of their deliveries nor some form of inhumane cargo capacity. No, it was the fact that no matter where and how far apart they were from each-other, they always manage to find a way back. One could not die without the other, it was their thing: how they repel BTs like salt to snails. Was that their DOOMS? Even if one claim to only see them and not sense them, the other with the exact opposite ability, was that really it?

Osama Express saw it fit to separate them until their deliveries were safely in their respective destination, it wasn’t a choice that went through without discussion; both of them figured it was one way to keep each-other safe, distance was something they could cross, but death? No one would be that lucky.

“Sometimes, I dream that we have the same Beach.” One of them said, having arrived earlier than their partner to a waystation. “I don’t want an afterlife where I’m alone. Without him.”

Fantasies like that kept you going in this bleak, dying world. Desperation was the only thing keeping them together, if not kindness. They were young enough for fantasies, old enough to only ever indulge themselves and not _believe_ in it, even if they didn’t understand why it was bad to believe or to hope when those are the only things that kept the world going; they wouldn’t understand, they were so young– born after Japan fell into ruins. Couldn’t hope to know what it was like before Death Stranding happened.

But they’ve thought about it. Life before Death Stranding, one like in the movies they’ve watched from David’s movie collection, (swear to God, that man is like a walking archive of relics from the old world) or reading from his collection of books; both fiction and nonfiction. They indulge, of course, you only get so few moments of them. They never knew that people could dance in the rain like that, never knew _rain_ could be so romantic. Little buildings made out of wood, colorful houses made out of bricks.

All their life, the only things they ever known are timefalls, BTs, and how to avoid them. One was a sun-loved boy of a Porter, it rarely ever rained when he was on the road. Even if it did, it was short and light timefalls, the BTs few and unmoving. He was the one usually tasked with the disposing of corpses to the Incinerator. One was a hell of a Porter, always knew how to survive in this desolate world like it was his God-given right, like he’s done this before. He could see them, that was why his tracks were almost always some form of straight line. BT territory never scared him, he trampled through them with no hesitation.

In exchange of separation, Osama Express allowed them two days off to spend with each-other. It wasn’t a sentimental decision of bringing two boys who clearly loved each-other, no, they would literally go into a _withdrawal_ state after being apart for so long. BTs would swarm around them, not because they were an open target (they were _always_ an open target) but the amount of _chiralium_ they exuded when they’ve been far apart for too long was ridiculous. They couldn’t control BTs, so the reason they exuded _chiralium_ was an anomaly, only those who control BTs would have some sort of _chiralium_ substance on them– never on ones who could only sense or see them.

When they enter the _withdrawal_ phase, BTs would start following them. Not touching, just… hovering above or behind them. It was catastrophic when the Osama Express first found out, two of them dragging an army of BTs into their base. It was a stroke of luck that Ophelia was around, they managed to avoid anyone getting a voidout by pelting hematic grenades and having the two boys lure the BTs away.

Cleanup was a bitch, though. All that blood. The number of hematic grenades they used had put a certain someone bedridden as well. Too much blood loss, had to recover for a week or so to get the blood level back to normal.

That was in their early days of joining Osama Express, when the company itself barely knew anything about them.

They showed up one day, hand-in-hand and white clothes tattered, covered in black tar and handprints and traces of _chiralium_ in the air; looking like the sun and the moon.

They showed up one day, hand-in-hand and demanded to be Porters if nothing else, two contrasts of each-other but never clashing; bitter determination and sour desperation.

They showed up one day, hand-in-hand and a conjoined BB in its’ pod at their feet.

Their names were Solar and Pyotr, one sun and one moon, chasing a dusk or a dawn that will never exist; a place where both can exist at the same time.

-

Svaha was deaf.

That made the BTs louder.

He hated that sound, the wailing and the ghastly voice that sometimes he could make some sense of. Names, mostly, words that are never finished and far in-between. It was just confused wailing most of the time, like children who can’t find their way home.

As the shower turned off, Svaha slicked his wet hair back to see where he was going. His back ached, he took too many loads at once yesterday and almost broke his spine add-on. Stepping out of the shower with only a towel around his waist, he took a moment for himself just to stare at his BB.

He was against having one, of course, it… it felt inhuman. To put a baby in a pod and call it _hardware_ and disregard their status as living beings; though he knew of the science behind it, Svaha felt _wrong_ for carrying it to a hostile environment. But you couldn’t hope to survive if you don’t have one, delivering packages through BT territories would be hell without them even if he could hear them.

As he stepped closer, Svaha let his hand rest atop the pod. Right on where the BB’s head is, and let himself grieve for a world he’s never known– a world where the BB in his pod might have a future. Being born at the edge of a mass extinction puts someone in a strange mindset, you learn to appreciate things as is and you never expect to survive but you will.

Being born at the edge of a mass extinction makes someone incredibly resilient.

Svaha turned away and put some clothes on, before attaching the spine model to his back.

He had deliveries to make.

-

Dr. Chandler was an exceptional medic, Amouterus’ very best.

When the patient (a reckless goddamn Porter that took more than they could) he’s tending to started to exhibit signs of rapid necrosis, Dr. Chandler was alone when the body began to jerk uncontrollably; a voidout was inevitable. He has been close to death too many times, had seen his Beach one too many times before being yanked back by a defibrillator and wondered if this would finally be the time he’d get to stay in it and never come back.

Dr. Chandler was alone, like he always was, and he would die alone. Like he always was.

This was the first time he witnessed a voidout firsthand, black tar up to his waist and a humanoid figure with no head and in its place, two hands clasped each-other. It started to raise from the ocean of black, black tar running down its’ body sluggishly; covering something gold underneath. It raised along with fishes, crabs, dead whales all covered in tar.

He didn’t know when the timefall had stopped, probably when that _thing_ started to manifest, but he was able to look up without the rain splashing to his face, from the end of its’ umbilical cord down to the top of its’ neck. He put his hand atop of his pod, his BB wailing loudly, gurgling. He couldn’t calm it down, not that it would matter, they would be obliterated in a few seconds; there would only be a giant crater on where he stood.

Everything was so _quiet_. He thought a voidout would be loud, would be like getting your senses assaulted. God knows how loud those BTs are, wailing and wailing _and wailing_. For something so invisible, they’re not quiet. But everything was silent, as he witnessed debris and things he could never comprehend even if he tried, started to float upwards.

A mandala. A pocket universe in its’ own.

The hands atop of its’ neck unlatched themselves, reaching for something in the sky that he couldn’t see. Then it clasped back together, and even the way it closed its’ hands felt final.

And it was. Final.

As he saw a bright light accumulating on top, gold flecks spinning wildly and despite his earlier thoughts; he turned his back to the humanoid figure, hunched himself over the pod of his distressed BB and held onto it _tightly_.

When everything was swallowed by a bright light, and when he woke up to a baby’s crying in an endless beach with dead fishes, dead whales, dead crabs, no one in sight: Dr. Adam Chandler realized right as he was dragged and plunged into the ocean that he was a _repatriate._

-

Coming back to the world of living was _shit_. Dr. Chandler blinked water out of his eyes, turned to his side and projectile vomited so much black tar it was a wonder he didn’t explode just from the sheer amount of it. It was after the last retching that he realized someone was patting his back, and moving his head (slowly, slowly, _God it hurts_) to face who it was with thousands of questions on his tongue along with hundreds of words for gratitude.

The man was dark-skinned, has a kind smile and hair that reached to his shoulder. He had an _odradek _tail, which was pretty goddamn cool and unusual, that flashed orange as it whirred like a windmill to a place somewhere beyond his form.

“Take it easy,” the man said, “you just survived a voidout. But we really need to get you out of here, BTs are bound to swarm in here. I’ll carry you.”

Dr. Chandler batted the hand that hovered over him and sat up slowly, patting his chest to find his BB gone. “Wh- Who are you? Where’s my BB?” He asked in a wheeze, his head felt like it was going to explode. His throat felt both sticky and like sandpaper, his eyes _stings _like hell.

The man held out a pod, the BB crying until it spotted him. To which it made grabby hands, and Dr. Chandler took it out of the man’s hands, rocking it slowly in his arms. He looked up to gave a suspicious (and a scrutinous) look towards the person that might have just saved his life, and he looks… kind. Benevolent. Forgiving. Like those prophets he’s heard in those thick books, like you could come crying to him and he’d have a solution for each of your worries then soothe your aches with a hug or a cup of tea. He unconsciously leaned closer to the other, like getting close to the man would heal the worst of his aches, somehow.

“Technically, we’re not allowed to interact.” The man gestured to the blocky letters on his uniform. _Osama Express_. “But I’m Svaha.”

“…Chandler. Dr. Adam Chandler.”

Then as if the man, _Svaha_, wasn’t warm enough– he beamed at Dr. Chandler. He didn’t get what it was that set him up like that, it was just some formal introduction and a name. Besides, it’s the least he could do for someone who dragged him out of the crater.

He started to turn his head towards where he knew the crater would be, but Svaha’s hand jerked forward to keep his head where it is. Dr. Chandler knew Svaha made it seem like he was checking for wounds, but really, Svaha just didn’t want him to look at it lest he’d go into shock or something.

“Nice to meet you, Dr. Chandler. And…” Svaha was looking at the BB clutched to Dr. Chandler’s chest, and it took only the doctor a few seconds to realize that Svaha’s cheeks were darkening at a rapid pace. He immediately took his hand off Dr. Chandler’s cheek, and muffled his laughter with it.

The BB in Dr. Chandler’s arms kept making heart-shaped bubbles at Svaha.

“BB!”

-

Later, Svaha would crowd him against the cavern’s wall. A gloved hand pressing down on his nose and mouth, he struggled but Svaha shook his head rapidly. A finger brought to rest on his mouth, and Dr. Chandler is smart enough to know that it meant he should hold his breath until the handprints moved away. Even they couldn’t catch a break from these freaky things, though it was to be expected since there was a timefall outside.

Dr. Chandler held his breath, and Svaha’s chest wasn’t moving as well. But he swore he could’ve heard the matching _thump-thump_ rhythm of their hearts, beating a little erratically as the BT moved around the cavern.

Svaha’s _odradek_ tail spun like a windmill, blaring orange until it receded back to its’ soft blue. Only when the _odradek_ gave them a thumbs-up does Svaha drop his gloved hand. He didn’t step away just yet, hands settling on Dr. Chandler’s shoulders.

“Are you okay?” Svaha asked, tears leaking from one eye. Chiral allergy.

“Yes,” Dr. Chandler said, leaking tears of his own from both of his eyes. “Can you move?”

“Oh! Right, sorry.”

Fucking BTs.

-

“It’s _so_ hard to form connections when you can’t even shake hands,” lamented Shinrai, hands going up in dark fumes. He offered one to Estella anyway, a smirk painted on his pale face as the female gritted her teeth and leaning her whole form away from a single hand. “But how about we try one, anyway? For old times’ sake?”

Estella clutched to her umbrella tighter than necessary, the glove creaked.

She never liked him. And him, her.

“Go fuck yourself.” Estella regulated her breathing, thought of her snowy Beach and the frozen black ocean, she let her grip loosened and turned to walk away from that despicable form. She stopped short a few meters away, she turned her head to the side and snarled. “Just get your job done. We made a contract.”

Shinrai put his hand back to his side, black fumes dissipating to the air and spreading into his skin. Estella heard the telltale sound of him teleporting to his heart’s wish, and immediately set her sight forward. True to her prediction, Shinrai stood after her only a few centimeters away. Her nose itched.

“So fearless,” he hissed. “Even if I have the possibility of being an Extinction Entity?”

Shinrai stared into her bloodshot eyes, unblinking and brimmed with anger that she was _sure _even Shinrai couldn’t comperehend. “I wonder if you’d be like this if you look death in her eye,” he said, “will you blink?”

And in the next breath, he’s gone.

Estella exhaled, the same time as her tears fell. Goddamn chiral allergy.

“Soliesha?” Estella said to her cufflink.

“Yes?” And the smooth, soft voice of Soliesha crackled to life.

“Take me home.”

“I’ll be there in a second.”

She wiped them away with a handkerchief, and walked onwards to take a hand (smaller than hers, but always stronger) into hers.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am on a fucking roll

“Pyotr?”

Pyotr answered the comm after he got down from that rather steep slope, and held his cufflink close to his mouth. “What’s the matter, Solar?”

“I think there was a voidout nearby,” Solar said, “this is in ass-end of nowhere though. Never made deliveries here.”

“So why are you there.” Pyotr frowned.

“Had to take a detour. Anyway, are you in HQ?”

“No, but I’m close-by. Why?”

“Ask them if there’s any cities out here. That voidout was pretty huge from what I sensed,” and Pyotr heard the telltale sound of splashing water, “and I don’t have time to check if it was from a city or something else. Time-sensitive delivery.”

“Got it. Be careful out there, Solar.”

“Aren’t I always? Love you.”

-

“This is happening way too much; your health is deteriorating. You look _worse_ than before.”

“I don’t care.”

-

Abraham carried his cargo and put his anti-BT rifle on his tool rack, as he casted one last glance to the waystation before he hooked up with his BB. He sucked a deep breath, knowing what will happen next as floods of memories filled his vision.

A vision of a hospital room, his sight is murky. Like he’s in some water, and there was a handful of people. He could see some tubes, people in white coats, and the only one that stood out was a man in all black. He was the only silent one amongst the numerous murmurs.

He felt the safest he’s ever been, like cradled in a warm embrace. He felt weightless, both figuratively and literally, like he was… clean. Of the burden he’s ever mounted on his back, cargos or his own mental baggage. At the sight of a man in black, his chest begins to bubble with a feeling that was… strange.

A pair of small, stubby hands came to rest on the glass. The incessant mumbling of a baby and air bubbles, only then did the man in all black turned his head towards his direction. He could hear the sharp clicks of the sole of a shoe against hard floor, and the cooing of a baby, and he couldn’t focus on the face that was leaning down to see him, why couldn’t he focus? It seemed so familiar, the black hair, the pale skin, the–

With a sharp inhale, Abraham was jerked back to his own head. Staggering lightly on his feet, he blinked out the vivid visions out of his eyes. The memories of it fading and slipping through his finger like water no matter how hard he tried to keep them, and at this point: he stopped trying. That image was… unusual, though.

The BB gave a little coo and spun in its’ pod, that made him chuckle.

Abraham stared at his BB as the elevator brought them up, the bitter memory of being dragged away from his wife’s and daughter’s forms in his own Beach. He would’ve been reunited with them, if someone hadn’t tried to resurrect him.

Abraham has always been harder to kill than most people. He didn’t know if it was sheer dumb luck or something else, but in every single accidents or attempts, he always came back alive. Either dragging himself out of debris or being dragged out of debris, he just… didn’t die. Even if he wanted to. He might be alive, but his soul was somewhere else; searching, searching for the people that ever meant anything to him.

_“You don’t really want to die,” said his colleague out of the blue. They were both loading cargos into their back, and Abraham’s hands stopped its motions. Focusing instead on the man beside him, a frown and a quite scathing remark in his tongue ready to be fired._

_“Abraham, if you really wanted to die, you wouldn’t have sent all those BTs to the other side.”_

_“What do you know.” Snarled Abraham, slamming down a cargo atop another one. He didn’t like where this conversation was going, and he was about to tear this man another stitch if he kept blabbering about shit he didn’t even know. How could he, saying this like that when he was the reason why Abraham–_

_“What I know is that as much as you yearn death, it won’t grant you that,” for such a ruined jaw, this man talked like he didn’t got them broken in the first place. “You’re a self-made repatriate. You parade around like you’d rather be ashes, but in each and every one of life-threatening situations: you find a way out.”_

_“That’s because I was a soldier.” Abraham said, strapping his cargo with more force than he intended. Pulling on the strap so hard, his hand burned._

_“That’s just another excuse.” The man heaved his own load of cargo on his back. Despite wanting to, Abraham couldn’t carry that much cargo with him; the size itself was intimidating. He’d topple over the second he tried to stand up._

_“I’m here because _you lot_ dragged my lifeless goddamn body out of those rubbles!”_

_“Don’t you get it?” The man flashed him a smile, already jogging away with that mountain of cargo on his back swaying with every move he made. “The thought of your wife and kid keep pushing you out of your own Beach.”_

_Abraham heard something like the snap of a rope inside his head, and turned to the direction of that smug motherfucker with a snarl. Only to find the garage door had closed, the man nowhere in sight and leaving only footsteps of mud._

_Fuck Sakaguchi._

As he remembered that particularly bitter memory, Abraham clenched his fists and stared hard to the ground. What was it that made Sakaguchi’s words hit home? Abraham couldn’t find it in himself to have denied it as well. He wanted to be reunited with his family, more than anything else, and it’s not that he killed BTs because he wanted to _survive_. They were the reason his family was dead, they were the reason this… this whole extinction thing happened in the first place!

So why…

His BB cooed again, little hands pressing on the glass of its’ pod.

Abraham huffed in amusement, as the elevator slowed to a stop. He loaded some more cargo as he arrived to the top, get the details of where to send these cargos from Aisthesis and trudged on to his trike.

This should only take a whole day.

-

“We are already living on borrowed time!”

“So what?! What do we have left anyway?! What do _I_ have left?!”

-

Zahn Leonhard was good at what he does.

I mean, hefting corpses, taking them to the incinerator, burning them. Easy enough business, right?

Wrong.

As a Corpse-Disposal member, you had to work fast. Necrosis was as dangerous as it sounded, and when it happens– it happens_ fast_. Voidouts were always creeping on the horizon, it was probably what made him too much of a paranoid in the first place. Having that sort of time strain on you, it was an adrenaline rush at the first couple of times but as he got acclimated to it, it gradually toned down. Being informed of a body that was most likely an hour away from going necro used to put electric shock down his spine, something close to fear wrapping itself around his fingers and sinking its’ teeth in his veins, but now it just filled him with a sense of urgency. Like you were on a deadline and you had to hurry and finish the report.

Crazy, right? How such a life-threatening job seemed almost normal, routine, to him. It was why in the cities, people had to be monitored. If one of them goes missing, they were to be immediately sought. The aftermath of death was dangerous, the imminent destruction that came after it would cause a chain reaction.

As Zahn laid the last body atop one of the incinerator’s altars, he watched as it slowly lowered down into a chamber. The glass panels slid close, and the fire glowed warm and orange, his face casted in the light of its’ embers as the metal panels closed as well.

Now, the thing with incinerating people: the tricky thing wasn’t how you _get_ to the Incinerator site itself. It was how you _get out _of it.

Why were there so little Corpse-Disposal members? Why were they sent only two to three people at a time, when they have so many corpses to burn?

When someone gets cremated, the Incinerator releases a great number of _chiralium_ into the air. It was why Incinerators are built so far away from the cities. _Chiralium_ attracts BTs, and the amount of _chiralium_ that would be released from one body is enough to attract a hoard of them, but _multiple_ bodies?

Zahn Leonhard possibly had the second hardest job in the world, right before Porters.

Good thing he wasn’t alone.

“Enma,” he called out. Enma looked up from the holographic screen generated from his cufflink, checking the list of people that are already cremated. “Let’s go. That was the last of it, we need to head somewhere west now.”

The rumble of a thunder made him flinch, and outside the broken window was an upside-down rainbow. Dark clouds rolling in thick as particles of gold float through the air, an invisible line tugged something underneath his ribs. He swallowed when the telltale sign of his DOOMS acting up started to appear, his throat clicking as he did so.

With the accuracy of a sniper, Zahn sensed the nearest BT was getting rapidly close, a few hundred meters away from the Incinerator. A horde of them was following close behind.

“Weather report said timefall’s coming in fast,” Enma jerked his wrist and his steps were brisk as he made for the exit, Zahn tailing behind him. “We might not make it to the truck.”

“You left your pack of cigarettes in there.”

“Did I?” Enma sighed, running a hand through his hair and Zahn shouldn’t have found the motion to be a little hypnotizing but he did. “Shit. That was this week’s ratio.” He clicked his tongue, and Zahn fixed his gaze forward again.

“Left my flask there too.”

And true to Enma’s words, the second they stepped to the concrete threshold of the Incinerator, the BB Enma was carrying gurgled and his _odradek_ whirred to life. It claps rapidly, and Enma cursed underneath his breath. Whatever was left of their conversation was cut short, both of them falling into silence as Zahn’s eyes started to have difficulty on focusing. There was too many BTs, his senses couldn’t keep up. As Zahn’s hand hovered on the gun at his side, (not that it would work but it was instinctive– the act itself drilled into him,) he turned his head to Enma, and the man held a finger close to his lips.

Both men trudged forward, crouching as they did, and held their breaths.

-

“Don’t you want to make it last?! You keep– going on and _on and on and searching _for this… this woman you’ve never known in your life! Stop hanging onto the past!”

“_I hear her! _In my dreams, I hear her calling out to me! The grass is always greener on the other side, _you _should understand that _better than anyone!_”

-

“How do we know he’s real?”

Abraham raised his eyes from his cards, Shinrai lounging on the bench across of him. Zahn looked up from his own too though he quickly casted them down again, while Enma taps his cigarette on the ashtray. They were in Enma’s private room this time, since they didn’t want their rooms to smell like shitty cigarettes.

“Who?” Abraham asked, and watched as Zahn put his cards down.

“Martino.”

That made all three of them stop whatever they were doing.

Enma was the first one to move, taking a drag of his cigarette and letting it linger in his lungs. With a tilted head and closed eyelids, he mused out loud, “that _is_ a valid question. None of us have really met him, outside of hologram interaction.”

“That is a _stupid _question.” Abraham put his feet down, snatching Zahn’s glass of some off-brand, shitty whiskey and downing it in one shot.

“_Hey._”

“That is a question worth entertaining.” Shinrai smiled, and Abraham wished he didn’t take his little weird cloak off. Abraham was on good terms with Shinrai, but it was moments like these that made him wish that some friendly knocking to the bastard’s teeth wouldn’t got him suspended or fired. Didn’t he know this place was monitored?

“No. He’s real, case closed.”

“But how do you _know_ for sure?” Shinrai zipped out of existence and in the next blink, he’s right in front of Abraham. Standing in-between his legs, leaning down close enough to meet him eye-to-eye. “Have you met him?”

“I have,” Abraham glared. It wasn’t the ‘you-piss-me-off’ type of glare, but it was the ‘shut-up-before-you-get-killed’ type of glare. Shinrai was sharp enough and smart enough to interpret it, eyebrows going up. He watched as Shinrai zipped away again, raising his hands as he shrugged.

“I just want to meet the guy, you know,” he said, toppling one of Enma’s little figurines, “curious as to how he is in person. He as scary as he makes himself to be, Abraham?”

“Intimidating,” and he looked down at his cards. Yeah, no way in hell was he going to win. All he had is some vague memories of seeing the guy on person, it wasn’t even vivid. Just a fleeting glance.

“Lucky you.”

And Shinrai smiled in that… weird way to him. Guy made him queasy most of the time. Abraham never understood him, he was the same kind as Estella. Kept everything underneath wraps, difference is that you’d have better luck trying with Estella than him.

“Royal flush, by the way.”

“Whoo! Go, Zahn!” Cheered Enma.

-

“But what about me? You _always _say you hear her calling out to you in whisper, but what about me? What about me, who always had to scream out for you?”

“I never asked for you to come to me every time I voidout!”

-

“You know the theory about each one of us having different beaches, Svaha?”

Svaha ran his hands through Samael’s hair, tucking strands of hair behind Samael’s ears. They were in the garden. The surroundings and the view outside were artificial, of course, but the plants were real. He brushed Samael’s bangs out of the boy’s eyes, curious purple eyes blinking up at him with childlike wonder. Svaha had his hearing aids off, and he had to read Samael’s lips; it was uncomfortable having them on for so long.

“I’ve heard of it, yes.” He nodded. Adam told him, once when they passed each-other’s route and took a… _break_ to wait out the timefall in some nearby cavern. The BTs only passed by, luckily, none of them entered the cavern and their conversation was uninterrupted.

“But I share one Beach with Ramiel and Camiel,” then his eyes went somewhere, looking at something that Svaha couldn’t discern. “It’s how we could talk without having to meet each-other. Why is that?”

“Maybe you have a really strong bond with them,” he said, “this is the first time I’ve ever heard of someone sharing a Beach, though.” Svaha cradled Samael’s head, and he wished he could bring Adam here. They’d love each-other, and he was sure that Adam would be better at explaining things like this to Samael.

“Hm,” Samael hummed, pressing one his cheeks to one of Svaha’s palms. He could feel the vibration of the hum, and felt bad for not being able to give an answer.

“I’m sorry, I don’t know much about Beaches.”

“Nah, it’s okay!” Samael sat up, scooting closer to Svaha’s side and hugging him. Samael’s arms barely circled him, and Svaha put his hand in-between Samael’s shoulder-blades, pulling the boy close and he swore to himself that he’d never let anything happen to him if he had a say in it. “I bet Rakta’s smart enough to explain ‘em, though.”

“He might,” Svaha said. “But I don’t think he’s in HQ…”

“Isn’t he in evo-devo? What’s he doing out of the HQ?” Samael asked, tilting his head to the side. Svaha realized he was speaking slower than usual, and kept his face right in Svaha’s line of sight so he could lipread him. It was very thoughtful. Sometimes, Svaha still had trouble deciphering what someone said if they spoke too fast. Samael was like that sometimes, if he met Svaha halfway back to HQ. He’d ramble on and on about his delivery and the things he met on his way there and back, but he must’ve seen that Svaha wasn’t using his hearing aids.

So considerate, this boy.

“I don’t know,” Svaha shook his head, “but I saw him left. He usually leaves twice a week, doesn’t he? I tried asking him, but it seemed like he didn’t want to talk about it…”

“But it’s raining. He usually leaves when it’s not.” Samael pursed his lips in a way that Svaha knew that it was a sign for when he’s _really_ thinking about it. Svaha himself had worry, it was raining rather hard and he’s heard news of a potential supercell. He just hoped that Rakta wasn’t getting up to anything dangerous, there were too little people with his capabilities left in this desolate world. “Do you think I should ask him?”

“No, I don’t think so, my boy. We should let him be.”

-

“I had to come, what- what if you don’t come back? What if all I see is just a giant crater, and- and that’s it? What if I screamed out to you and you never answered?”

“And why does it **_matter?!_**”

“_Because you’re the only thing I have left, Rakta, I’m not letting you chase some fucking ghost at the cost of your life!_”


End file.
